Stay With Me Quotes
"The things that matter are inside me, locked up below my breast as though in a grave, a place of permanence, my coffin-like treasure chest."
"Once I leave, I probably won’t even remember the one who asked me to be his wife."
"I have wanted to leave since the three corpers in the National Youth Service programme were killed."
"Every night I shut my eyes and pieces of the life I left behind come back to me."
"You have had my son between your legs for two more months and still your stomach is flat."
"She had begun as always with my long-dead mother, since she was the second woman he had married."
"I was prepared to lock up my hairdressing salon throughout the coming week and go in search of a miracle with my mother-in-law in tow."
"My parents-in-law lived in Ayeso, an old section of town that still had a few mud houses."
"I could see all of them chasing after me, deranged and drooling like rabid dogs, green robes flapping in the wind."
"I had been fooled again. For some reason, I was still stupid enough to imagine that the two of them had entered into my sitting room without a ready agenda."
"There was no electricity in the hospital when I arrived."
"I decided to go into the market to buy a few items for my salon."
"‘Yejide, so it is you? I saw the person and I told myself, no, it can’t be Yejide.'"
"We are begging God for a good market day. Still, we thank God because we are not going hungry."
"‘Remember to visit us once in a while, try and show us your face now and then.'"
"Every time he married a new wife, my father would tell his children that family was about having people who would look for you if you got kidnapped."
"‘Goodbye, Iya Tunde.’ ‘Goodbye-o. Greet your husband for me.’"
"I fought off thoughts of my lonely childhood, rubbed my stomach through my clothes and was comforted."
"‘I don’t think I am pregnant. I know I am pregnant.'"
"‘Marry me now,’ I said. ‘Life is short, why should we wait until you finish your degree?'"
"I disliked the woman so much in the first week after she arrived that, in a wild moment, I considered moving my salon to another location."
"I took to walking to and from work because my psychiatrist recommended exercise."
"Sometimes I think my husband’s words made it easier for me to let Dotun comfort me."
"We called the baby Olamide and twenty other names."
"Moomi said Olamide was a bad child, an evil girl who had chosen to die."
"Then I noticed the breast-milk stain on the front of her green blouse."
"Don’t worry, you will soon have another child."
"I told Olamide several stories, expecting that one day she too would tell the world my story."
"He cleared his throat. ‘So you are pregnant?’"
"It was still a question. The man thought that my head had scattered, scattered to the point where I would strap a calabash to my stomach."
"‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a while, ‘about the baby’s death.’"
"If it had been Akin who had died, they would not have been so shocked to see my hair chopped off."
"‘What happened to your hair?’ he asked, pushing the calculator away."
"A bird chewed it off my head on my way home. What else could have happened?"
"‘Skin cut,’ I said, trying to work out candle wax from the rug with my big toe."
"Akin knelt beside me and laid his head on my stomach, one hand clutching my dress, the other hanging limply over the edge of the armchair."
"Never imagined that I would ever in seven lifetimes have to see my brother thrusting into my wife, grunting like a pig as he came."
"Shape it into a reason that explained it all. All she needed was an answer, any answer."
"I hated myself because I watched her delicate face until I fell asleep, etching each feature into my mind in case she was not there when I woke up."
"You bloody . . . bloody . . . did my brother behind my back. You are the unfaithful wife."
"You can never cover the truth. Just as nobody can cover the sun’s rays with his hands, you can never cover the truth."
"‘I’m sorry,’ he said, patting Rotimi’s head."
"Yejide, why do you want me to tell you what you already know?"
"‘That is how it always seems-o, children grow up so fast,’ the retired principal said, smiling."
"It is not by force. If you don’t want to marry her, we can arrange something. Just get her pregnant."
"Is this my daughter? Akinyele, is this my daughter?"